New Music Tuesday

(Remember, it's new to me.)

Flipping through the stations about a few weeks ago I came upon a concert on the Madison Square Garden network. MSG was doing a series of shows played there. I started watching for a minute but then couldn't turn it off. They played the music I like - accessable songs with open spaces for the musicians to improvise. The band? of a revolution - better known as O.A.R.

Day Tripper

5:00 AM. I haven't seen this time in a long time. Wow, it's still dark. Shower and shave, straighten my tie, pick up all my stuff for the trip (resume copies, boarding pass, book, iPod) and I'm off to the airport.

Traffic is light so LaGuardia is only a 10 minute trip at this hour. The 7:25 flight is booked solid. I'm a little surprised but then again I'm not an experienced business traveler. I'm wedged into the middle seat in row 15 between a very attractive young lady (alas, she's wearing rings) and a young man who eats part of his bagel, opens his computer, closes his computer, flips through some papers from his bag for 10 seconds, puts on his iPod, turns off his iPod, eats part of his bagel, repeat full sequence for the whole 2+ hour flight. A little less caffiene in the morning bud, especially before flying. I get a good 2 hours of reading my book (Twinkie, Deconstructed), time I never seem to get when sitting at home.

The pilot makes good time and we arrive in Chicago about 20 minutes early. Of course the gate isn't ready for us so we spend that extra 20 minutes sitting out on the tarmac waiting. We finally taxi to the gate and I can get a little more space. This is the second time I've been in Chicago and both time I've never left the airports. I've heard it's a pretty nice city, and if their airports are any indication of the city I would believe so. O'Hare is very nice (compared to the airports in NY) but a maze of gates and terminals. I was walking around for about 15 minutes before I found the American Airlines Admirals Club, where the meeting will take place.

The Admirals Club is a fancy little meeting place set up in the airport. It seems to be pretty active, looks like a lot of people flying in for interviews (I don't know if anyone else is flying in for this job). Our meeting starts a little after 9. I meet the three people who I more or less I would be working for. It appears I'll have a few different bosses coming at me from different angles. It's a situation that I'm used to as the last place had the same structure. In fact the business models of the two are so similar that I think the transition to this job would be a very quick one. I have no doubt that I could be successful in this position, both for myself and the company. My hope is that I have convinced these people in that in the short time I had (well, it was about 2 hours).

But I still have to wait a little bit. The manager of the NY office is on vacation this week and he'll be a part of the decision to hire me. So they promised me an answer next week. Hopefully this will be the last week of poor sleep.

I had about 2 hours to kill before the return flight so I wandered the airport. It's almost like a mall that airplanes come to. Do people really buy suits, dresses, humidifiers during waiting time in the airport? Seems very odd to me.

The trip back was uneventful and luckily I had an aisle seat this time. I needed to decompress a little so I just leaned back, put the iPod on shuffle and listened to music for the next 2 hours, trying not to think. I was back in the house by 5:30 and that was really the first time I relaxed the whole day. It's always great to get back home.

The Suspense is Killing Me.

You too?

:)

Impluse Buy

It was in front of the house, for sale. I had to have it.

Leaving on A Jet Plane

On Friday I received the information for my day trip on Tuesday. Finally!! I think I'll have to slow down my NY pace for these Mid-Westerners. And I slept good last night. Didn't realize it was playing on my mind so much. I leave NY at 7:30 AM and get back in at 5:00 PM. That's a full day at the office. Haven't had one of those in a while.

The kids come back home from summer vacation on Monday - the party's over. teh house has been so quiet, I'll have to get used to the noise again. Their grandmother called today and said the boys have complained that their rooms don't have air conditioning (the grandparent's house has central AC). She wanted to know if she could pick them up some AC's for their rooms. "I sent sons out there, you're not bringing me back daughters, are you?" I bet they're not happy.

Looks like I called the end of summer too early. It's 91 today and humid (now they're really not happy). But next week will be low 80's so it's fine. A temperature range of 75 to 80 (that's about 24 to 27 for our foreign readers) would be ideal for me in the summer. Fall is coming. Can't wait.

New Music Tuesday

It may not be exactly "new" music but it is new to me. And no, Hal, I'm not trying to separate you from your money (although this may be good stuff for flying your copter to).

I was listening to a friend's iPod a few weeks back and came upon an interesting band - 30 Seconds to Mars (she has turned me on to a few good new bands this year). The band is fronted by Jared Leto. I'm not familiar with his film work but his band is pretty good. Not a bad video either. (Volume warning - it gets loud).

Testing One

Spent this morning doing some assessment tests at the company where I interviewed. They told me HR came up with this last October and every applicant has to go through it. Lots of math (all long hand, no calculator allowed), spelling and alphabetizing (do you file Hudson, Thomas before or after Humphrey, Fred?), word associations (dog is to canine as cat is to the General's "chicken") and personality profiling (T or F, I have never been angry with anyone). It took about 2 hours and near the end I just wanted to stab myself in the eyes at the redundancy of the whole thing. The only test I'll have left is the pee-pee test if they make an offer on the 28th.

Been cool here in NYC for the last few days, almost like autumn. It's nice to not run the AC all the time (and saves some cash) and to get outside. I wouldn't mind summer being over a little early this year.

Update

Well, my butt was handed to me today. By both of them. And Scott scored the best and he's out driving me. Not that I hit it long anyway, but he's a lot longer than he was last year. I was really impressed with the way they both played.

They want to do it to me again tomorrow. It's going to be a long week.

Man vs.

Rainy Day

Rainy day today. Pretty dismal out, made me lazy. Like I need an excuse.

I was able to get away for a few days last weekend (an unplanned escape). A friend has a place on the north shore of Long Island a few hundred feet from the beach. And it's a quiet beach so I was able to get some early morning walks in without the usual crowds around. And we got out one night to look at the stars without all the light pollution of the city. But of course the best part was hanging with some good friends and having a few laughs. It cleared some of the cobwebs out of my head.

Next week I'll be heading out to spend a few days with the kids. Yes, there will be
golf involved. Although the last few years we have tried to place this course it has rained that day. I don't mean just rain, I mean monsoon conditions. So this will be the first time we will all be playing here. And yes I thoroughly expect to get a butt whipping from these kids. They are playing far better than they did last year and I haven't played at all.

Watching the PGA today I like this commercial (love the website name, too).